Man's Gift To Pa. College Marks Rare Friendship Harvey Wexler's Fascination With Bryn Mawr College Sprang From His Friendship With Joan Coward.

July 22, 1996|The New York Times

As Harvey Wexler lay dying from cancer last year, some of his friends were concerned that he might not have enough money to pay his medical bills.

But last month, after Wexler's estate was settled, Bryn Mawr College received more than $11 million, its largest gift ever, from the unassuming man who lived in a modest one-bedroom apartment in northwest Washington, D.C.

Wexler's fascination with Bryn Mawr, a women's college outside of Philadelphia, sprang from his close 30-year friendship with Joan Coward, a government economist who graduated in 1945. Donna L. Wiley, director of resources and secretary of the college, called it one of the most romantic gifts she had ever seen.

"Clearly, he adored her," she said.

Neither Wexler, who was 67 when he died, nor Coward ever married.

He was a deeply private man. Not only did his best friends not know of his wealth, but some of them did not know of his relationship with Coward, either. But a picture of his life and his decision to make the gift emerge from letters that he wrote near the end of his life and from interviews with friends and business acquaintances.

Wexler met Coward in Washington in 1960, when both their careers focused on the airline industry. He worked for the Air Transport Association of America, a trade association, and later became a senior vice president and lobbyist for Continental Airlines. She was an economic analyst for the Civil Aeronautics Board. She moved to an apartment in his building, and they spent a good deal of time together.

She told friends that she was not the marrying kind, drawing parallels between Katharine Hepburn, a Bryn Mawr graduate and her idol, and herself.

Although not an active Bryn Mawr alumna, Coward treasured her education there. Wexler recalled in a letter to Coward's sister, Nancy Urban, that on their first date in 1960, Coward had told him how they had used original documents rather than textbooks at the college.

"I even tested her on one matter, and she knew more than I," he wrote, adding that a professor friend of his told him that a Bryn Mawr bachelor's degree was equivalent to a master's degree anywhere else.

Coward grew up in Bryn Mawr, the older of two girls, and attended a local private school. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College, she worked for Eastern Airlines as an economic analyst before moving to Washington in the mid-1950s.

After Coward died of cancer in 1990 at age 67, Wexler wanted to create some kind of memorial, perhaps a scholarship fund. The more he talked with Bryn Mawr officials, the more enamored he became with the college, college officials said, and the bigger the gift grew.

He also struck up a running conversation with a Bryn Mawr economics professor, Richard Du Boff, who will hold the first chair in economic history. It will be named after Wexler's parents. "Basically, we talked to each other about how fed up we were with the state of the economics profession," Du Boff said.

Another chair will be endowed in Coward's name for political economy, and two more chairs in Wexler's name for professors in economics, history, philosophy or political science.

Wexler's views on money, education and philanthropy owed much to the influence of his father, Samuel, an Austrian who came to the United States at age 5. In a letter to friends shortly before his death, Wexler recalled how, as a 5-year-old during the bank panic of 1933, he sat on a tall stool and watched tellers at a bank that his father owned give depositors their money when other banks remained closed. The next day, people lined up to deposit more money. "That was my introduction to the world of business, human psychology -- and a lesson no college or university could possibly teach," he wrote.

Wexler made steady investments in blue chip stocks and lived modestly. But otherwise, his friends say that they have few clues to how he accumulated the money he left to Bryn Mawr.